Reforming the Church is a complex, almost an impossible task. Already, criticism of the Pope’s delays is beginning to mount: he needs our prayers

There have also been scandals implied about some of those he has appointed: the truth of these has been denied by his spokesman, but the gossip persists

Is Timothy, Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, really becoming impatient over the way Pope Francis is running the Church? “We wanted someone with good managerial skills and leadership skills, and so far that hasn’t been … obvious,” the Cardinal said in an interview recently.

His remarks are being quoted in support of the contention that Pope Francis’s apparent hesitation in reforming the Roman Curia is beginning to disquiet some of the Cardinals who elected him; in support also of one explanation currently being given for this lack of movement in Curial reform: that the Pope is simply ignoring the Curia itself completely, governing through a small group becoming known as his “”segretariola”.

What is happening, according to the same observer, is that “in the little office of pope Bergoglio on the second floor of the Casa di Santa Marta, where he has chosen to reside, many things are decided and done that never even pass through the majestic Curial offices of the first and third loggia of the Apostolic Palace, a few steps away from the now-deserted pontifical apartment.

“The secretariat of state continues its routine work, but much more at work is another secretariat, miniscule but highly active, which in direct service to the Pope attends to the matters that he wants to resolve himself, without any interference whatsoever.”

Is this true? This is an apparently well-informed account of the “segretariola” by means of which, it is said, the Pope is running the Church by simply ignoring the existing structures of Curial government. Maybe this would be a good idea, maybe not. It could certainly be a good idea in the short term: but sooner or later, the Vatican bureaucracy is surely going to have to be either reformed, cut back, or just closed down where necessary. I have to admit, this alleged “segretariola” makes me a bit nervous: it depends vitally on who is part of it; and that depends, above all, on how good a judge of character Pope Francis is.

The report I have been quoting, it should be said, emanates from a familiar informant, the famously well-informed Sandro Magister, whose website I have found over the years to be an invaluable source, usually borne out by events as they unfold, of information about just what is going on inside Vatican City. The question arises: what is his source for this story? Perhaps someone with an axe to grind in “the majestic Curial offices of the first and third loggia of the Apostolic Palace”? One simply doesn’t know.

Magister, is not, it has to be said, a commentator with a reputation for disloyalty to the Holy See. And he points out that Pope Francis is not the first supreme pontiff who has governed in this way: he instances one of the greatest and holiest of them, Pius X, who a century ago also governed through an inner group called a “segretariola”. Pius X, also, had come to a negative judgment about the Curia, but even after he had reorganised it he was very careful to protect the little personal secretariat with which he had surrounded himself immediately after his election in 1903.

Magister draws an extended and very interesting comparison between the two popes. Pius X “was also born to a poor family, and continued to dedicate himself even as Pope to the help of the poor. He was dearly loved by people of humble conditions. He led a simple and austere life.

“He had a good-natured disposition, not devoid of irony. He had a profound spiritual life and was later proclaimed a saint. He had a tremendous capacity for work, which he extended into the nighttime hours. He did a great many things on his own, keeping the curia in the dark about them.”

One hundred and ten years later, says Magister, this Pope, too, has inherited a Curia which needs entirely to be rebuilt. But that, he seems to be insinuating (and not for the first time) requires a soundness of judgement about people which perhaps Pope Francis does not always possess. For instance, “perhaps he may have wanted to do something similar to his holy predecessor when last July 18 he appointed among the eight experts of the newly created commission for the reorganisation of the economic-administrative offices of the Holy See, with right of access to the most confidential documents, an expert in public communication, the thirty-year-old Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui.”

This exceptionally glamorous young woman has not unexpectedly, given her extreme pulchritude, received considerable Italian media attention since her appointment: and it emerges from this intense scrutiny that among her other friendships (including several Cardinals) with Vatican and related connections has been one Gianluigi Nuzzi, the receiver of the documents stolen from Benedict XVI by his unfaithful butler.

She is, according to the well-informed John L Allen “a 30-year-old devoted Catholic who’s worked, among other places, at Ernst and Young … [and] is the child of an Italian mother and an Egyptian father. She could also be a candidate for another distinction: The first papal nominee in history to lose a job because of use of social media.”

Allen continues: “Enterprising journalists followed her digital paper trail, and here’s what they found: Back in February, she tweeted that Benedict XVI had leukemia, although the Vatican has repeatedly denied that any specific health concern led to his decision to resign the papacy.

“Chaouqui has (also) sent out several seemingly friendly tweets about journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, who was the one who received stolen documents from the Pope’s butler and gave rise to the Vatican leaks affair. At one stage, Chaouqui told Nuzzi he was ‘bleeding right’.”

She has sent out many other gossipy tweets. Allen accepts that none of them are really scandalous. But they do, he says, illustrate her poor judgment and the lack of a good “internal editor” before hitting the “send” button. Nonetheless, her internet gossiping has caused some commentators to wonder if Chaouqui really belongs on a commission charged with drafting the blueprint for Pope Francis’s reform of the Roman Curia (when it actually does start to happen).

A far more scandalous accusation is that which Magister has levelled against an Italian priest, Msgr Battista Ricca, whom the Pope has appointed as his personal representative on the Vatican bank. Those close to the Pope have denied the truth of Magister’s story: so I don’t want to give it any more currency here than simply to indicate that it exists. What it all goes to show, however, is what an indescribably complex, indeed, almost impossible, task the governance of the Catholic Church really is: and how much The Holy Father needs our prayers if he is not to be wholly engulfed by it.

Dr William Oddie is a leading English Catholic writer and broadcaster. He edited The Catholic Herald from 1998 to 2004 and is the author of The Roman Option and Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy.

I must take issue with your simplistic analysis at times. You are also on record as saying that the Popes like John XXIII and Pope Paul VI are heretical Popes. You come on a Catholic website and insult the Popes. What gives you that right? I think the webmaster should reconsider your participation on these web pages and delete all your contribution. You SSPX people have your own sites. Go post your insults on your websites. Why should we give you the oxygen of publicity here to air your simplistic void and bigoted views? You think only you SSPX folk are right?

Did John XXIII and Paul VI ask to be Popes? No. But they accepted. Cardinal Siri won the first time and he declined because he was threatened. Then John XXIII was elected. The 2nd time Siri won again. This time a specific threat came allegedly from the Kremlin that if he accepted him and his family would be killed. (The Kremlin did not deny) Again he declined. Would you wish for such a Pope? A man utterly lacking in courage? Not me sir, Were not the Swiss Guards, Vatican Police and Italian police capable of protecting him an his family from the threats? Sir, I and I know you too would have accepted had you been elected. So if he is martyred for his faith he is following in a good company – Jesus Christ, Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

Sir what do the words BE NOT AFRAID in the bible mean? if Siri was a coward, why blame Popes John XXIII and PUal VI

If Siri had accepted we would not have the schism and SSPX would not be outside LOOKING IN. Within a generation your sect will be irrelevant. I for one do not want any SSPX back. neither you nor your leader Bishop Fellay – he is if anything a TROJAN HORSE. We must beware. He could become a Cardinal and then the Pope and recapture the Roman church for the SSPX. For this reason I do not want to have anything to do with Bishop Fellay, you or any member of the SSPX. You may call yourself what you like – Traditionalist and label the rest of us Catholic Lite. But within one generation from now you, your people and your sect will be EXTINCT.

Benedict Carter

Long rant saying nothing.

“You are also on record as saying that the Popes like John XXIII and Pope Paul VI are heretical Popes.”

Prove this slander or apologise. You won’t be able to prove it, so you might as well apologise now.

Oh, by the way, the average age of Traditionalists is below 35. I am sure that will make you pleased and glad at the way God is renewing His Church.

brother francis

small churches, small congregation, dwindling membership. Within a generation caput.
I am researching these past pages and will prove your heretical statements posted on this site. They are there.

Benedict Carter

Sorry, when you talk about small churches etc. you are referring to your local diocese or what? Mystifying.

Get on with your research! Good luck.

Benedict Carter

You’re replying to a post of mine?

Guest

Indeed, as I am in my early 30s, it is only at the TLM where I feel I am not a very youthful Catholic.

quisutDeusmpc

The official Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Russia has been done. What is left undone is the ubiquitous living out of that consecration by the world. Pope Pius XII did consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart. But this is not some “ex opere operato” that works like some magic talisman. What has to work in concert with the consecration is a sufficiently ubiquitous living out of the consecration in people’s lives along the lines of “ex opere operantis”.

Do we see widespread repentance from sin in the world? Do we see widespread praying of the rosary in the world? Do we see widespread acts/lives of reparation for sin? No, no, and no. This is not a consequence of a failure to Consecrate the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Russia, but the failure of the people to take up the responsibility that is associated with the Consecration and live it out in their individual lives. The latter must work in concert with the former. The Consecration by the Pontiff is not a magic talisman, an incantation. It is indifference, apathy on the part of Catholics in the world AND of the world. Salt that has lost its ability to preserve, light that is hidden under a bushel.

Finally, and I mean this with all due reverence to this purely private devotion to Our Lady of Fatima: there is more to be gained from the simple living out of our baptismal vocation, our confirmation vocation, and the simple living out of our vocation in the world whether it be lay (either single, married, or consecrated religious) or clerical than there is to all of this hand wringing about whether such and such consecration was said on such and such a date, by whom, with or without the support of the hierarchy in accord with the Holy Father. Private revelation is just that: private. It MAY be believed, but is NOT required to be believed. It is PUBLIC revelation: sacred Scripture, sacred Tradition, and the sacred Magisterium as one sacred deposit of the Faith that is absolutely, and unequivocally required by all to be believed for the salvation of one’s soul. You hold to Fatima (and rightly so, in my humble opinion, because communism is not consistent with the Catholic Faith) another holds to Our Lady of Loretto, another to Our Lady of La Salette, another to Our Lady of Knock, etcetera, etcetera. I am certainly not knocking it (no pun intended), but it is not the very heart and soul of the faith to believe that Lucia dos Santos and the others witnessed what they did, to hold to the Miracle of the Sun, or any other aspect of this private revelation or any other approved by the Church. The heart of the messages that are proclaimed have been part and parcel of the Church from the moment Jesus Christ began His public ministry, and even prior to that in the People of God of Israel under Tanakh: namely, to repent of our sins, to pray, and to lead lives that atone for sins and attempt to evangelize the world. You can go on and on about the propaganda coming out of such crank sites as “fatima.org” all you want.

The Holy See and the Secretary of State were specifically entrusted with the Fatima messages and the “secrets”, and in contact regularly with Sr. Lucia. They are in the know, not “fatima.org” or you, in particular. You can speculate all you want. Roma locuta est, causa finita est. Otherwise, one is on a slippery slope to becoming a Protestant

http://jabbapapa.wordpress.com/ Julian Lord

Believe me, “brother francis”, Ben has made NO “heretical statements”.